For Annie Allen of Boulder, the new Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, Buddhist-inspired but deeply ecumenical and dedicated to the integration of nature experience and spiritual practice, couldn't be more timely.

"Local community organizations like this have probably always been important, but I think they're even more urgently important today, partly because of what's happening with the federal government, globalization and climate change," Allen, a research associate at the University of Colorado School of Education and longtime meditation practitioner, said.

"To have a place where people come together, and they are committed to learning in a really sincere, authentic way — great things can come from that — and that's probably one of the only places great things come from. It represents the seeds of what we need more of," added Allen, who attended the center's debut meditation weekend in June.

The 180-acre center near Ward is available as a low-cost rental facility to any spiritual group that aligns with the center's values and is expected to attract participants from around the nation and the world.

"We don't have any restrictions on the kind of spiritual practice a group can do up there," Johann Robbins, insight meditation instructor and center co-founder, said. The practices could be Christian, Sufi, kirtan, yoga, contemplative art, and so on — it's up to the people who want to put on a program up there.

Part of the center's goal is to be as open as possible, especially to kids, native Americans, people of color, underserved communities — center organizers would love to see that up there, Robbins, of Boulder, said.

The historic property includes a lodge from the original Rangeview Ranch, built in 1938 by biologist, educator and lobbyist Hazel Schmoll, who died in 1990. She was the first woman to graduate with a doctorate in botany from the University of Chicago. Schmoll created a noted herbarium, conducted the first comprehensive botanical study of southwestern Colorado, and led nature tours into Rocky Mountain National Park, which borders the ranch, in addition to many other accomplishments.

The property was purchased by the Ecodharma group on June 15 for $375,000 from the national Christian Science Church, which used it as a retreat center and guest house. Schmoll had stipulated in her will that the center could only be sold to a nonprofit, Robbins said. The purchase was funded by individual donations and a low-cost loan from a private donor.

Believed to be the first facility of its kind in North America, the center grew out of contemplative backpacking and river trips led by Robbins and fellow co-founders David Loy, Zen Buddhist teacher of Niwot, and Peter Williams, Boulder-based insight meditation teacher and transpersonal psychotherapist.

"My goal was to find a home for those retreats and everybody else's, and make them a lot more accessible," Robbins said. Surrounded by public lands, the center lends itself to hiking, backpacking and wilderness solos, but is welcoming to a wide range of people.

According to Loy, noted author of "A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency" and nine other books, many of which interrogate the relationship between Buddhism and modernity, "ecodharma" is a new concept that's still being defined and which involves three core elements — meditation in nature, reflection upon the ecological implications of traditional Buddhist teachings, and strategizing responses to the ecological crisis of climate change.

Irene Shonle, of Rollinsville, a Colorado State University extension agent for Gilpin County, went on a multi-day contemplative backpacking trip in Colorado's Collegiate Peaks with Robbins a few years ago.

"To me these retreats, where you get to be out in nature — it brings it home to your heart," Shonle said. "It brings it back to the roots of meditation, because most of the original meditation masters, including the Buddha himself, meditated outdoors."

In June, she maximized her outdoor experience at the center's weekend meditation retreat by camping out instead of staying in the lodge.

"We spent so much time outside. We got up, and our first sit of the day was watching the sun rise over the mountains. We were pretty much outside all the time, we were even eating outdoors on the deck ... I didn't feel like that much was really lost, at all," Shonle said.

Thora Olsen, a Berkeley, California-based middle school gardening teacher and environmental activist, is attending the center's 10-day August retreat on a World Wildlife Fund scholarship specifically for center activists.

"I think that at the bottom of it, my spiritual practice and my activist work are both asking, 'How can I live a more meaningful, true life and how can I contribute to creating a more equitable, loving world?'" Olsen said. "We really need the introspective, quiet, contemplative work, to then take that and let that fuel our fire and support us as we go into the world and fight for the change that we want to see." She added, "Contemplative practice ... allows us to show up in the world with fresher eyes and a more open heart."

Also attending the August retreat is Buddhist practitioner Jeffrey Johnson, of Baltimore, a University of Maryland emeritus professor of public health who is likewise on a path to heart-centered activism, after decades of a more analytical approach to social justice.

"I've accomplished a lot ... the question is what can I do that's really from the heart — not so much what I think I should do, but what do I really want to do? What really calls on me? Part of that has to do with being in nature," he said.

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